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Recently I started using Goodreads to keep track of my lists of books. I thought I would do it in other ways, but why reinvent the wheel, you know? I hadn't anticipated in using as a social media outlet, but I discovered that some of my friends write witty and fun commentary on the books they read. It's like what I do, except without all the work of hosting a website! How did they get smar

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I haven't been totally inspired to write a post about children's books in quite some time. Sure, I've gotten my hands on new Linda Ashman books, but you guys already know how crazy I am about her books. Since I'm already talking about the dear woman, have any of you read Samantha on a Roll yet? Or No Dogs Allowed? We've read them so many times that I probably have them memorized. What wa

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I'm an ardent fan of Garth Nix. His trilogy, Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen rank in my top 100 Best Books of All Time. No, it's not an official, written-down-on-paper sort of list. I wish it was. That's actually a good idea. But it would take too long and require lots of effort, so how about I just do this review instead? In particular, I love the audiobook versions of this trilogy, read

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I have reviewed every single book in Trenton Lee Stewart's series, The Mysterious Benedict Society. That seems like overkill, really, but in this case, I don't care. Often I won't bother to review later books in a series if I loved or hated them equal to the original. What seems to happen with Stewart's books is that I love them just so much that I can't help but want to make people read the

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I'll admit that I'm a John Green junkie. I loved Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines, which were both deliciously angsty and witty. I love me some wit. Green moved off my radar for a couple of years for no particular reason other than life happening. Then a friend mentioned his Crash Course videos on YouTube, which I watched and loved. They're like 10 minute biology or world history co

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Did anyone read this article, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" by Amy Chua, back when it was circulating around in the social networks six months ago? Please tell me you were just as astonished by it as I was. When my book group recommended we read Amy Chua's book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, I was all for it. I knew there had to be more to the story than just that article, which is an

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Remember that whole debacle a while ago about Pluto no longer being a planet? It was such a kerfuffle! People took sides and got really passionate about it. I vaguely remember my mother-in-law wearing a pin that said something along the lines of "It is SO a planet, jerks." Hopefully she'll correct me on that if I've got it wrong.
The man who killed Pluto's planetary status is Mike B

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One day I called my mom, just to chat. We like to talk about books, naturally, so we got on the topic of what we've read lately. As I started describing The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards to her, it sounded more and more depressing to my own ears. It's a sad book with a sort-of redeeming ending, but man, I did not sell my mom on this book. I try to be straight up with her on books

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I spent most of the last few months of 2011 in a book funk, which carried over into 2012 for the month of January. I just couldn't seem to find anything to catch my interest for longer than a few minutes at a time. Ideally, a book should be so good that I can't fall asleep at night or I sneak it into my lap while helping my kids practice the piano. During a period I've decided to call The Gr

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I don't know if you've noticed, but Caren and I haven't written much in the last, oh, several months. It's been a turbulent year for both our families and the dust-covered website is evidence of how little of our time has been available for writing reviews. There have been many times that I've wondered why I'm bothering to keep this up at all with how neglected it's become, but every time I de